Voyage to Venus

Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago are accustomed to the murky fog of Victorian London and the palatable pints of half and half at the Red Tavern. They are not used to travelling through time and space with their old friend the Doctor.

And now they find themselves whisked off to the planet Venus in the distant future, at a time when warrior women rule from a floating city in the clouds. There’s a mystery here, one that the Grand Empress Vulpina intends to keep secret. Even if it means destroying these visitors from the long-dead planet Earth…

1 Comment

Styre
on July 21, 2017 at 12:08 AM

VOYAGE TO VENUS

At the end of series 4 of Jago & Litefoot, the two investigators of infernal incidents step aboard the sixth Doctor’s TARDIS and leave the bonds of Earth behind. But rather than leave the subsequent adventures to the imagination, Big Finish did something unusual: they brought the stars of their spinoff back into the parent series with two Doctor Who stories. The first of these, “Voyage to Venus” by Jonathan Morris, is an entertaining, if somewhat generic, story that delights in putting our heroes in bizarre situations and seeing how they react.

Apart from a couple of Missing Adventures, Doctor Who hasn’t spent much time on Venus, so it’s interesting to see the planet represented here. It’s many years into Earth’s future, and Venus is now a lush world with a city suspended in the clouds over the jungles below. The people are ruled by a Grand Empress, Vulpina (Juliet Aubrey), whose power rests on a dark secret. Naturally, the Doctor, Jago, and Litefoot are captured soon after landing. The Doctor and Litefoot investigate the secret behind Vulpina’s rule while Jago serves, embarrassingly, as her pet. The central revelation, that the people of Venus are actually human refugees from Earth who altered their biology to adapt to their new planet, is predictable as these things go but lends the story some additional weight. It also leads to the expected ending where the Doctor must convince someone that humans aren’t all as bad as their worst individuals. Morris is a skilled writer, so the material doesn’t feel stale, but there isn’t much ground being broken in this story.

There is, however, a ton of continuity porn. We have Venusian shanghorns, and references to perigosto sticks. We have an explanation for why a traditional Venusian lullaby has the same tune as “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” And we even have an explanation for why the third and sixth Doctors seem to have been here at different times. Fortunately, Morris is one of the best-ever Doctor Who writers when it comes to incorporating continuity, so this comes off as appealing instead of annoying.

The main attraction here is finally seeing Jago and Litefoot along for a TARDIS trip. Now that they’re back in a Doctor Who story, they slide easily into the companion role, and their Victorian perspectives allow the Doctor and others to explain what’s going on. I enjoyed their takes on the usual Doctor Who tropes: Jago thinks that everyone on Venus speaks English because it’s the lingua franca and sees nothing unusual about it, Litefoot dives right into an alien autopsy without a second’s thought, and so forth. Morris really understands these characters, and pairing them with the spiky, irritable sixth Doctor adds a little tension to the affair. Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter are, of course, wonderful – this is the first review I’ve written since Baxter’s unfortunate passing and it is very clear that he will be missed.

The production is similarly strong. Ken Bentley directs to his usual high standard, while the sound design and electronic score from Fool Circle Productions is striking – it really feels like it’s set in an alien jungle at times. Overall, “Voyage to Venus” is a fine little bonus story that continues the Jago and Litefoot story in admirable fashion.